A primary teacher and their sporadic views on technology in education, the world and life in general.

4 entries from September 2008

During our trip
to Tanzania, we were shocked and saddened by the lack of resources the
children at our partnership school have. This year we have therefore
decided to collect for them rather than our usual 'Shoe Box' appeal...we are now asking the
children to fill one of the Hessian bags that are available from most
superstores for about £1.00, the Tanzanian children can then re-use the
bags as school bags.

I joined a very special club today. I was in the supermarket picking up a few bits and pieces, then queued at the checkout. As my items began to be scanned through the cashier suddenly said

"Did you used to work at [insert school name here]" she said

"Yes I did" I replied

"Bet you don't remember me", she added, covering up her name badge.

It was at the moment that I remembered this was a child I had taught back in the mid 1990's. And so, I am now a proud member of the "my pupils are old enough to work" club. Where do I get the badge from?

With everything else going on in the world at the moment, this news item seems to have slipped through quietly;

The Sats tests could end next year, Schools Secretary Ed Balls has hinted.They may be replaced by assessments tailored to the ability of each child, he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.The national tests are taken by about one million children aged seven, 11 and 14 across England each May, but this year's marking was a "fiasco", he said.A five-year contract with ETS Europe was scrapped after it failed to get papers marked in time, and the next contract will be for one year only."The current system is not set in stone," said Mr Balls."We are looking currently at a way in which we could assess progress child by child with individual level tests where the tests would be chosen in a way which was right for the child, rather than everybody doing the same test on the same day."For 2009, we are going to do the same kind of tests as in previous years before the problems with ETS, but for the long term I am really keen to get this right, to listen."The new exams would still be marked externally, Mr Balls added, at least for children leaving primary school.

So, a surprise announcement and launch of a brand new web browser from Google. It seemed to come from out of the blue, but unfortunately for everything that is does that is good, there is one glaring omission that makes it (as far I am concerned) unusable.

Where is the support for RSS? There is no feed icon that displays in the browser bar - sorry Omnibox!! And, if I do manage to type in the URL of a feed, I don't see a nicely arranged, clearly laid out series of posts and articles on the screen, I see one lump of unreadable, squashed up text.

Maybe they want me to use their Google Reader if I am reading a feed? Well, if they do they thought wrong. I'll stick to Firefox thank you.